


Go

by Lydia_Eve



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 06:56:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15880866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lydia_Eve/pseuds/Lydia_Eve
Summary: Harry keeps leaving, and Draco doesn't care.





	Go

# Go

Harry Potter gazed across the moors, the dying landscape that surrounded Malfoy Manor. The view never failed to make him question his choices, what he was doing there. It wasn’t the bustle and energy of London, nor the mountains and forests surrounding Hogsmeade. It wasn’t the thrill of Quidditch or the sureness of Ginny’s lips on his. Malfoy Manor – like its inhabitants – was its own.

_Come back to bed._

_No._

_Fine, let yourself out if you want to play games this morning._

The water had begun to run in the other room. Harry did consider letting himself out. He couldn’t stand another quiet breakfast in the conservatory where he and Draco tried to pretend there wasn’t a Death Eater dining with his wife in the other room. Saying nothing of the fact a house elf had made it for them.

The water turned off before Harry could come out of his thoughts. Draco’s eyes narrowed as he came back into the room, dripping water on the hardwood.

“Are you staying after all?” he asked. His voice betrayed no sign that Harry’s answer mattered to him, as always.

Harry shook his head. “Listen, Draco–”

“I don’t want to hear it, Potter,” Draco snapped, toweling off and going for the wardrobe.

Potter. They were back to that.

“Don’t want to hear what?” Harry challenged. He’d been ready to leave a moment ago, but now Draco’s tone had touched a nerve, and he was back at Hogwarts, furious and wanting to make Draco _pay_.

“Don’t want to hear your meandering bullshit.” Draco yanked a navy set of robes over his head. “You do this every time. Either go or stay, but stop torturing everyone with your endless qualms.”

“Maybe I like torturing you,” Harry murmured before he could stop himself. Draco was right. He needed to stop wavering.

That made Draco pause momentarily, but his eyes narrowed even further. “Stop it.”

Draco’s rejection seemed to bring Harry back to his senses. It’s not like they were going to fuck again this morning when Harry was trying to say goodbye. But Draco didn’t want a goodbye. _Go or stay_. Harry was going.

“See you around, Malfoy,” Harry said, but Draco had already turned away, so Harry’s final glimpse before he apparated was of blue robes trailing away.

_Crack._

Grimmauld Place was a place of many comings and goings, party central on weekends, and residence of up to six witches and wizards at any given time. Harry and Ginny had a bedroom on the fourth floor. Ron and Hermione on the third. Harry had knocked a massive skylight into his room so it felt like being in the great hall at Hogwarts.

Ginny wasn’t there as Harry came home to change. One of the many benefits of being an Auror and working odd hours was that an affair was incredibly easy to fashion. Combined with the fact that Ginny’s Quidditch season kept her extremely busy for nine months of the year.

Because a year it had been.

The first time it had just been drinks and a vague idea of moving past childhood grudges in light of everything the Malfoys had done in the war. Well, in light of Narcissa Malfoy, but Draco had at least … vaguely tried to hide Harry’s identity from Death Eaters. It counted. Harry was ready to move past it all.

Draco was ready to move past it too, though he’d had very different ideas of what that looked like. The first time he’d kissed Harry, the kiss had gone on entirely too long before Harry had broken away and explained in great detail about how utterly heterosexual he was while Draco went steadily pink and tried to pretend like Harry wasn’t speaking.

A week of agonizing later, and Harry had turned up on the steps of Malfoy Manor. Lucius Malfoy looked terrified, and Draco’s eyes went so wide they looked like they were going to fall out of his head.

“I thought you were the straightest straight guy who’d ever lived,” Draco breathed as Harry kissed him. So he had been listening after all. Lucius had said something long-winded about how he absolutely had correspondence to attend to, and he was absolutely not fleeing the sitting room of his own house in terror. Harry had moved fast, straddling Draco on the sofa and bringing their mouths together. Draco responded hungrily, hands flying to caress Harry’s face and neck and shoulders.

“And I thought you hated me,” Harry returned, working his way through the buttons on Draco’s shirt. He grinned. “Things change.”

Now things had to change again.

Draco Malfoy had been a mistake. Obviously. But things were not all right between Harry and Ginny, even if Draco had been removed from the equation.

Harry ignored the faint sounds of explosions coming from George Weasley’s room, and padded into the kitchen to make tea. Ron was playing some kind of card game with Neville and Seamus at the long oak table. He saw the look on Harry’s face and threw down his cards.

“I’m out,” he said lazily.

Seamus cackled and pulled the tiny pile of knuts into his hand. “Two weeks in a row, Weasley,” he said.

Ron leaned back on his chair. “Yeah, if you add it against your four loses last month, you might be a knut or two ahead.”

“I always thought he was a knut or two short,” said Neville in a rare moment of wit.

Even Harry joined in the laughter.

Eventually Seamus and Neville got the hint and left for the pub early with Ron promising to meet them there.

“So,” said Ron, accepting the tea Harry had made him too.

Harry took Seamus’s seat, and stared into his tea. 

“It’s not working with Ginny,” Harry said, refusing to look up. The tea leaves looked back: _go for a brunette_.

Ron nodded, but didn’t say anything for a while. Eventually he nudged Harry’s arm across the table.

Harry looked up. “What?”

Ron looked incredulous. “Well, I’m not going to yell at you, if that’s what you’re waiting for,” he said.

Harry felt the ghost of a smile cross his lips. “Yeah, I kind of was,” he admitted.

“People break up, Harry,” he said simply.

“Yeah, I just don’t know what to tell her.”

Ron looked at him sharply. “Well you have to tell her soon,” he said. “Even if she weren’t my sister, you still can’t go back and forth in your mind forever.”

_Go or stay._

“I won’t. I’ll tell her today.”

_Crack._

Ginny apparated into the bedroom late that night, already irritated at something that had happened at practice. Harry was hoping to find her in a good mood, but in the end, it was probably for the best. It turned into a fight, both sides shouting things that were both hurtful and true. Harry collapsed exhausted into bed alone that night, but it felt like a weight had been lifted. No more lying. No more affair. No more Ginny. No more Draco.

Harry Potter and the Clean Break.

Work kept him busy during the week, and Saturdays remained pub night with the Gryffindors. He and Ginny had cooled off a week or two later and had a more reasonable breakup the second time. At Harry’s insistence, Ginny even said she’d continue to live there, and promptly took the big bedroom on the third floor that Harry knew Ron had been thinking of for a nursery in a few years.

It didn’t matter. Not a lot mattered, actually. Voldemort was gone, nurseries could be put in other rooms, the world could have kept passing Harry by…

It took four months before he apparated to Malfoy Manor again.

_Crack._

The wards surrounding the Manor only allowed outgoing apparation and apparation within the building itself, so Harry appeared at the road and glanced around to see if any Muggles had been passing by. He needn’t have bothered. The closest village was thirty kilometres, and Muggles weren’t overly enchanted by the view of the near-barren landscape.

Somehow it was always overcast when Harry walked up the path to the front doors. The cool wind held more bite than it should for an early-October afternoon.

A timid house elf opened the door when Harry knocked. He almost left right then. Who where the Malfoys to keep an elf when they had treated their last one so terribly? He hadn’t come here with anger, but he felt it now all right.

“Potter,” said Draco, coming into the entrance hall.

“Why are you calling me that again?” Harry snapped. “Isn’t having my dick in your mouth enough to warrant a first name?”

Draco stopped at the foot of one of the two main staircases. “As charming as ever, I see. Did you come here just to antagonize me?”

“No,” Harry snarled, but he could hardly segue into his reasons now.

Draco swayed a little closer. “Or maybe you came her to torture me, as you put it?” he murmured.

Harry closed his mouth over Draco’s. Draco’s fists gripped the front of his robes and pulled him maddeningly close. Harry pushed Draco’s lips apart with his tongue, and willed Draco to make that sound again.

Draco finally pulled his head back and looked at Harry with pupils blown wide with desire. “Bedroom. Now.”

_Crack._

About a month later, Harry knew he needed to call it off again.

Their affair had continued much the same way it had before – right down to the hideously awkward breakfasts with Lucius and Narcissa – except.

Except it wasn’t an affair anymore.

This time the kisses weren’t stolen, the touches weren’t forbidden.

Harry had seen the article about his and Ginny’s breakup in the paper on Draco’s desk. Draco knew. Everyone knew. They never talked about it. What would they say?

But still, now that Harry could spend the night – and the night after that – without thinking twice, it became more real somehow. When Draco planted a kiss on Harry’s shoulder before rolling over to sleep, Harry didn’t need to tell himself this was just a mistake. When Harry tasted Draco’s trembling lips as he begged for it, Harry didn’t need to remind himself it was just temporary.

“More tea?” Lucius absent-mindedly asked Harry that morning, reaching over with the teapot.

“Thanks, Lucius,” Harry said, lifting his cup.

Draco’s shocked expression brought Harry back to reality. He and Lucius both froze for a moment before the pouring tea rose up and out of the cup onto the table.

“My goodness!” Lucius exclaimed loudly. “Someone must exit the dining room and retrieve a towel!” He fled the room, his wand abandoned next to his toast.

Narcissa smiled politely in that pureblood way and whisked out of the room after her husband.

Draco began to cackle.

“Stop that, it’s not – Draco – it’s not that funny,” said Harry, trying desperately to fight his own laughter bubbling up in his chest.

But Draco was almost crying with mirth. “I’ve never seen Father so horrified,” he managed to say. “Please do that more often. No, wait. Let me sell tickets first.”

By this time Harry was grinning himself. “Fine, I guess it was a little – listen, if you’re not going to eat that…”

Harry took advantage of Draco’s glee to swipe the last of the bacon on Draco’s plate. Draco looked briefly outraged, but his laughter had taken over, and Harry wasn’t sure Draco could stop at this point.

Harry ate the bacon, watched Draco, and thought, _Beautiful_.

The crack of the house elf brought both of them back to their senses as he began to stack plates on the table. The house elf never spoke, Harry noticed. Draco watched Harry grow more and more sullen.

“It bothers you,” said Draco.

Harry said nothing. Of course it did.

“They don’t like being set free,” Draco continued. “And besides, where would it go? Should I offer it a living wage instead? Room and board in exchange for housework? Four weeks vacation? This isn’t the Ministry.”

Harry met Draco’s anxious eyes. “You could try,” he said.

“Oh, for –” Draco let out a frustrated breath. “Come here, Welly.”

The elf had barely started on cleaning the table when Draco called him. He looked startled to be addressed and approached Draco slowly.

Draco in the meantime whipped off a black slipper. Harry held his breath.

“I’m going to give you this in a minute,” Draco said, holding the slipper up. “Then you’re to leave the Manor and go think about this job opportunity. Same tasks as before. Four days on, two days off. Ten sickles a day. Come back tonight if you’re interested.”

Welly cautiously reached for the shoe. Draco raised an eyebrow. The elf’s fingers closed around the slipper.

“I won’t be back,” said Welly, and disapparated.

Draco stared at the spot Welly had just occupied. “Mother’s going to kill me,” he said, and put his head in his hands.

Harry stood, walked around the table and knelt next to Draco. He touched the other man’s hair briefly, and Draco looked up.

“Why is it that I’m a fool around you?” Draco said.

Harry smiled. “Maybe–”

Draco frowned. “What?”

Harry had about to say something incredibly foolish back. But the words died in his mouth. He wasn’t with Ginny anymore, and there was no more buffer between his life and Draco Malfoy. He’d even just addressed a Death Eater by his given name, for God’s sake. If he’d said it, things would get real. _More_ real. Christ.

“Nothing,” Harry said, straightening up. Draco’s eyes followed him. “I’m not going to thank you for showing basic decency, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said, harsher than intended.

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Draco said slowly.

“I – this was a mistake,” said Harry. He cringed inwardly. “We can’t do this anymore.”

Draco looked at him like he’d just grown antlers. “I didn’t exactly come kicking down your door to get you here, you know.”

“I know.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Draco, I–”

“What are you still doing here?”

No one had cleaned up the tea. It pooled next to the toast, on the table with the rowan-imprinted silverware that had become as unforgivably familiar and comfortable as the dead landscape surrounding the house. Partially terrifying Lucius was fun, truth be told. Showering in the south wing was always a little too chilly, but Draco always had a fire going when Harry returned to the bedroom. Seeing Draco’s grey eyes catch the firelight as they fooled around on the carpet in front of it was a great discovery. Falling asleep in each other’s arms had become habit. It would have been too easy to keep.

“Nothing,” he said.

_Crack._

Hermione was telling a story about work a month later. Seamus was there with his new girlfriend, Hermione’s fingers grasped a tea cup in one hand, and entwined with Ron’s with the other as she spoke. Ginny’s practice was probably over by now, but she’d told Harry she had a date after, and that conversation was almost not weird.

Obviously it was insanity to want something with Draco Malfoy, childhood bully, and Slytherin pest. That’s why Harry’d hid it from his friends. Insanity.

Except Hermione was excelling at work, Dean was going to be a father any day now, George’s shop had gone from booming to exploding, Hogwarts was years in the past, and Ron was actually mature enough to handle the occasional shock. Harry was a grown-ass adult, and he could date whoever he pleased. Why the hell not?

“What about you, Harry?” Hermione was saying. “Is it work? You seem distracted.”

The damn Sorting Hat had tried to put him in Slytherin, and Harry had set out to prove it wrong. But bravery wasn’t a one-time thing; you had to keep being brave, again and again.

“It’s not work,” Harry said, noting Ron’s look of concern. “I’ve been seeing someone.”

“Great news, mate,” Seamus said.

“That _is_ great, Harry,” Hermione agreed.

“You messed it up, didn’t you,” said Ron.

The floor needing redoing, Harry thought, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes.

“Well go tell her you’re sorry, and take her out tonight,” Ron said, exasperated.

“It’s a man,” Harry told them, looking up at last.

Ron looked back. “That’s lucky. That means both of you probably messed up,” he said. Hermione choked into her tea.

Harry grinned. “Maybe,” he agreed.

An awkward silence had filled the kitchen, though it seemed more because everyone was waiting for Harry to act than because anyone was bothered by this news.

“I have a gay cousin–” Seamus’s girlfriend began.

“I have to go,” Harry said.

“You’ll be fine, Harry,” said Hermione, “just be honest about how you feel.”

“ _Hermione_ , that’s probably how he messed things up in the first place.”

“Ron, that’s no way to–”

_Crack._

The door opened to Lucius’s pale face, horrified as ever. Harry grinned. “Hey,” he said.

Lucius’s fingers tightened against the door. “Draco’s in the library,” he said thinly.

“Thanks, Lu,” said Harry, clapping him on the shoulder as he walked past.

Draco only briefly looked up when Harry entered.

“Go away,” he said, returning his eyes to the page. Harry noticed his eyes weren’t moving though.

“What am I to you?” Harry asked.

The book slammed shut. Draco stood, furious. “This,” he said, “ _this_ is what you’ve come here to say?”

Harry came around the desk and jumped up to sit where Draco’s book had been a minute ago. “Yeah,” he said casually, “I want to know if this has meant anything to you.”

Draco looked like he wanted to kill him. It didn’t exactly inspire romantic musings.

“Meant anything?” Draco bit out. “Like what? Something so precious that it warrants walking out for no reason every few months?”

“I guess that’s fair,” said Harry, snagging a finger on Draco’s belt loop and pulling him closer. Draco came easily enough, but he didn’t look happy about it. “Maybe I only left because you never seemed like it mattered one way or another to you.”

“Like you were any different,” Draco shot back. “I thought you liked having your dirty little secret.” He still hadn’t moved away.

Harry ran his hands up Draco’s arms. Draco was standing almost between Harry’s legs now. Harry could feel him trembling.

“Draco,” Harry said, low. Draco hadn’t given him much. Nothing, really. But Harry had come to be brave. “I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry because it was rude and you deserved an explanation, but I’m mostly sorry because I’ve missed you so much.”

Draco’s breath caught. Harry tilted his head up and caught the breath with his lips. Draco leaned in, hesitant, wary, but he kissed Harry back all the same. After a moment, all Draco’s hesitation was gone. He gripped the front of Harry’s shirt and kissed him and kissed him.

“I want to do this right,” Harry said into the kiss. Draco’s eyes widened. “I want to be with you. I just need something from you. Tell me you want this.”

Draco breathed a laugh. “God, Harry,” he said, “maybe that’s what I was trying to tell you last time.”

“Tell me you want me,” Harry said.

“I want you,” Draco said, touching Harry’s face. “I’ve always wanted you…”

Afterwards, they got dressed in comfortable silence, shooting each other the occasional grin. Draco had objected to the getting dressed part at all, but Harry didn’t want to give Lucius a heart attack by finding them like that in the library. Heart attacks were too fast for how Harry planned on killing him.

“Listen,” Harry began, “my friends are waiting at my place…”

Draco, who never took anything the right way, blinked once in disbelief. “Are you s–” He looked outraged. “Fine, _go_.”

“No!” Harry said, laughing. “I mean–” He held out his hand to Draco, who looked like he was beginning to understand. Harry was beginning to understand too. “I mean I want you to go with me.”

_Crack._  



End file.
